


What Was Once Will Not Be (and how it changes makes all the difference)

by Goat_in_a_coat



Category: Original Work
Genre: Awkward Lesbian OFC, F/F, Finding Oneself, Identity, Inspired by Real Events, Meet-Cute, Of course not, That’s definitely not me, Weird formatting and line breaks, decision-making shenanigans, im sorry, plot twist: that clown is me, the dialogue is so stilted i can see the clown on the top, wild times ahead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23688976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goat_in_a_coat/pseuds/Goat_in_a_coat
Summary: Her name is Bia. They call her Beatrice.
Relationships: Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	What Was Once Will Not Be (and how it changes makes all the difference)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so this is a real quick short thing, have fun with it i guess?? (If anyone actually reads this lol)

Her name is Bia. They call her Beatrice. 

It started that one time in the second grade when a teacher with old and failing eyes and those horrid horned rimmed glasses that cling to one’s nose secured by a cord wrapped around the neck and ears deciphered her name through the haze of her vision just a little bit wrong.

Nicknames were a specific hate of this particular teacher, who always called little Benny Benjamin and Lizzy Elizabeth. Some recovered from this. Elizabeth goes by Liz, and Benjamin goes by Jamie now. But since that fateful day, Bia (or Bea, as the now retired Mrs. Jollip saw it), has always been Beatrice. At school, of course, but also at a friend’s house, at home (her parents decided: “Oh, but doesn’t Beatrice sound so much more professional? A girl could go far with a name like that!), and at all the places that matter except for that small private place inside of her own head. 

Bia was named by her wayward Aunt Kris, who has an obsession with greek mythology and a propensity for puns. “You can BIA whatever you want to BIA!” Kris used to say while she bounced a young giggling Bia on her knee. In a more serious moment, alone in the living room with her parents and younger brother absent on a mission to clear the younger child’s intestinal tract of unnecessary metals (Timothy, for some reason, loved the taste of pennies at that age), Kris looked at Bia straight on, her intense blue eyes holding the gaze of Bia’s somewhat nondescript brown ones, and told her that she was named for force and power. She can make a change just as easily as moving her finger. 

Bia kind of hates the name Beatrice. 

Bia kind of loves her Aunt Kris.

Bia’s father--Kris’ brother--is boring and nice and beige all over. He graduated from a small college (where he met Bia’s mother) and then went on to law school. He now works as a dime-a-dozen attorney at the government’s patent office while Bia’s mother writes articles for a local newspaper. Beatrice’s parents are supportive and lovely. They bolster Beatrice’s confidence, they push her to do her best. When Beatrice brings back perfect grades and shining teachers’ comments that Beatrice is a joy to have in class and that Beatrice is very helpful with the other children, she just understands so well and of course that Beatrice is one of the most intelligent students I have ever taught, her parents congratulate her and tell her to keep up the good work. 

They never tell Bia that she's doing well.

The last time Bia had seen her Aunt Kris was in the fifth grade. That was when her family had visited the cancer ward of the hospital. Kris’ hair was gone, and she seemed smaller, sadder somehow. Reduced from her former vibrancy to a fragile eggshell on the verge of cracking and leaking yellow goo. 

On all of her college applications, Bia writes down the name Beatrice Stephensen, oddly feeling like she’s signing something away.

When Beatrice Stephensen gets accepted into Princeton University, her parents celebrate. Their daughter was so successful, on the way to becoming more successful. They had completed their greatest obligation.

Unlike other summers, Bia’s last summer before she headed off to college was, for the most part, free. She had no obligations to fill, no summer work to complete. She had already gotten into the college of her “choice” and done everything right. So those first few weeks after graduation--while her younger brother was still in school--were strangely empty . Bia spent her days reading books her mother had recommended to her (the ones not included in the school curriculum which Bia’s mother considered to be classics), and, when her parents weren’t home, surfing the internet and finding out what kind of cheese she was based off of the way she organized her room (Beatrice was colby jack). One day, halfway through Moby Dick, the doorbell rang.

Beatrice answered.

A girl stands out on the front porch, looking slightly awkward. Her feet are angled in a way that makes her knees bump into each other as she stands, and her hands twist around themselves, and when Beatrice arrived they had abruptly stopped. 

“Hi! So I heard that we were both going to Princeton this fall and well I wanted to come see if you wanted to, umm… like be my roommate or something?? Well, if you don’t want to that’s totally fine you’re you and I’m me and there’s no problem with that and I just thought it might be cool and I’ve never talked to you before now I only know that we’re going to the same college because I saw it on the school website and then I might have looked up where you live in the directory which might seem a little creepy but I swear it’s right out there for anyone to see if they want to so I um yeah…”

Here, the girl’s frantic explanation withers a bit. The girl looks up from her feet, and when her eyes land on Bia’s face the girl’s mouth shuts, and then opens slightly with a faint pop as she continues mumbling, this time seeming, if possible, more panicked. Bia stands bemused in the doorway. She blinks once. Takes a breath.

“Sorry, do I know you?”

The girl on the porch stops mumbling. A furious red blush begins to take over her face, and her head moves in quick jerking nods that remind Bia oddly of a woodpecker. Though perhaps this girl is less inclined to go smashing her face against a tree trunk. Or is she?

“I thought you knew...we, um go to the same school--I’m in your homeroom?” It comes out like a question, like for an instant this girl doubted what before she knew as obvious, undisputed fact. “I’m Helen. Um, Helen Song?” Her hand comes up in an aborted, cut-off wave that twitches twice, once left and once right, shaking imperceptibly.

“Uhh.. Well, Hi, Helen, I guess.” Bia says hesitantly.

“Heyyyy...Well, if you're not interested at all, I guess I’ll, um, just...leave…” The girl, (Helen, apparently) moves to turn away, looking at something that is probably nothing in the space above Bia’s right ear.

“Hang on, wait!” Bia interjects. “Um, uh, you said something about being roommates?” It’s not really something that Bia has thought about before, actually, and she’s cautiously interested. Her parents...well, her parents have not said anything about this. They congratulated her when her acceptance letter came in April, but since then, have been oddly...silent about the whole affair. “I’m interested, don’t leave yet.”

Helen wishes that people would stop expecting her to be gorgeous.

Helen knows her nose is just a bit too large to be considered cute, and that her hair is boring and stock straight. She knows that there is not a “natural blush” in her cheeks and that her eyelashes are short and that her teeth are crooked because she doesn’t like wearing her retainer. To be honest, Helen doesn’t really care.

But for some reason, other people do. Helen almost never meets people on her own--it’s always through her parents, after they’ve already met the person and given them the spiel about their genius daughter who is beautiful and blah blah blah. These people always take a glance at Helen, look away, and then back at her really quickly with a sort of disbelief in their eyes because surely, this can’t be the pretty girl that her parents were just talking about, she’s just too...plain.

Helen is sure that her parents don’t do it on purpose, but it still hurts a little all the same. Helen thinks that her parents must have been out of their minds when they named her--what possessed them to name a premature ugly raisin baby after that famous beauty of Troy? Maybe if they gave people realistic expectations of her before they met, Helen would have more close friends.

This is a lie that Helen tells herself, and she knows it.

The reason she doesn’t have close friends isn’t because people are expecting her to be pretty, it’s because Helen doesn’t really talk to people. She just...doesn’t see the need. She can do perfectly fine without anyone there.

This is also a lie that Helen tells herself. She isn’t as aware of this one though, and Helen is desperately lonely.

Helen’s parents always ask her if she’s got a boyfriend. 

They don’t know that Helen will never have a boyfriend, because Helen doesn’t like boys.

Helen likes girls and it’s a little awkward when she’s standing on the porch of a girl who she may have “researched” a little on the internet to see if she was “roommate material,” and unfortunately there had been no pictures involved in her frenzied information-gathering session and Beatrice Stephensen opens the door and oh my God that girl is cute.

Helen immediately makes a fool of herself and is just about to run home and hide for about sixty million years when the girl stops her. And says that she’s interested. Helen feels like maybe she might want to die, just a little.

“Is there a form I need to fill out or something? Because I can do that.” The cute girl (Beatrice, Beatrice! She can’t be referring to a person in her head as “cute girl”, that would make her come across as even more creepy than she has already presented herself. Curse teenage hormones.) says, lifting a hand absently to her (adorable!) chin in thought.

“Wait--wait. You’ll do it? Sorry, but we, um, don’t really know each other?” Helen says.

Beatrice looks confused.

“But...You’re the one who asked. Were you not being serious?”

“Oh! No, I was being very serious! Serious as...serious things, a serious person, yes. That’s me! A serious person.” Helen fumbles. Fantastic, she thinks to herself sarcastically. This is going just as planned. 

Beatrice raises a (perfect!) eyebrow, and her the corners of her lips twitch slightly upwards before forcefully returning to a neutral expression. If Helen weren’t looking at her so closely (not in a creepy way! She swears!), she probably wouldn’t have noticed how Beatrice exhales a little bit more forcefully through her nose.

Oh my God. Helen realizes. She thinks I’m funny.

“Ok, so do you want to do this, or not? Just to clarify.” Beatrice says firmly.

“Yeah...yeah. I want to! Sorry, there are a couple forms that you can fill out on the school’s web page--it’s just requesting for now though, nothing final.” Helen replies, trying to look at Beatrice with a little less intensity. “But if we both fill out the forms with each other’s names on them, we will probably end up as roommates in the end.”

Beatrice nods. 

“Got it. I’ll do that. Do you want to meet up somewhere later so that we can talk it over more? I’m free tomorrow.” She tilts her head to the side a little. “Actually, I’m always free. Huh…”

“I can do tomorrow,” Helen says. She is most definitely ignoring the way that Beatrice’s eyes had caught the light when she tilted her head. They’re brown, and Helen thinks, gorgeous. “Does Chonky’s at 12-ish sound fine? We can talk about it over lunch.” Helen is wired. That, right there, is a coherent sentence that she just said. Internal applause, anyone?

“Sounds great!” Beatrice grins. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Helen stops for maybe half a second to stare dumbfoundedly at Beatrice’s smile, which is unfairly amazing. Then, she makes an executive decision to go home and scream into a pillow before she does anything else. (Helen is also really, really happy. It’s complicated and she doesn’t feel like parsing through her feelings right now.)

“All right, then! Bye, Beatrice! See you tomorrow!” Helen says, returning the grin, although maybe it’s a little (lot) more unhinged than Bia’s is, but who’s checking. (Helen’s smile actually looks a little like she’s eaten six children. Bia is at the same time a little bit frightened and ecstatic.) 

But Bia’s grin shrinks as she realizes something. Helen called her...Beatrice. Bia decides, in that moment, that she is done. Done with being called a name that she did not want to be called. Done with being Perfect Beatrice. Done with always struggling to be better, when all she really wants to do is be.

Bia decides, in that moment, that she’s going to make a change, just like her Aunt told her she could, long ago. It’s not quite as easy as lifting a finger, but maybe that will come later. 

“Actually...Helen. Call me Bia.” 

“Ok, then. Bye, Bia!”

The grin is back. But now, it looks just as unhinged as Helen’s was before.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Seriously.


End file.
